Justin Vivian Bond joins Anthony Roth Costanzo in their critically-acclaimed Only An Octave Apart at Wilton’s Music Hall. It is an incredible new show that mashes up opera arias with pop songs, including Purcell’s 17th-century aria Dido’s Lament and Dido’s early 2000s hit White Flag. The show is a joyous and surprising musical fantasia, revelling in everything strange and beautiful in the coexistence of contrasts.
Only An Octave Apart was a massive success at New York’s St. Ann’s Warehouse. The New York Times called it “Best Theatre of 2021″ and Time Magazine called it the “Best Classical Music of 2021”. The show now runs in London for a whole month at Wilton’s Music Hall from 28 September – 22 October. Wilton’s Music Hall is the only surviving Grand Music Hall in the world.
“Best Theatre of 2021” – New York Times
Justin Vivian Bond was one half of the massively popular Kiki and Herb and has had a hugely successful solo career for over thirty years. Justine has headlined at prestigious venues such as The Syndey Opera house and Carnegie Hall, receiving several gongs, including an OBIE Award, a Tony Award nomination, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award and a Bessie. They have appeared in the films Shortbus and Can You Ever Forgive Me? Justin has also written a prize-winning memoir ‘Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels’, winning the Lambda Literary Award for transgender non-fiction.
Anthony Roth Costanzo is a Grammy Award winner and also has been named Musical America’s 2019 Vocalist of the Year. He is the star of Philip Glass’ ‘Akhaten’ and will appear at the Printworks London in September in ‘Glass Handel’, an opera where Glass juxtaposes Handel.
In ‘Only an Octave Apart’, Bond and Costanzo express their queer identities through unique interpretations of classical and pop and through hybrids of the two. They make the gendered history of this music their particular plaything. Bond and Costanzo invoke mythology and nature, romance and radical compassion. They carve a new pathway between opera and politically subversive cabaret – two art forms that, as Bond puts it, “have been kept alive for generations by queens”- and allow old works to reveal surprising new stories.
Buy tickets for Only An Octave Apart at https://wiltons.org.uk/whatson/753-only-an-octave-apart
28 September to 22 October, Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, London E1 8JB
Read about the history of Wilton’s Music Hall:
https://www.wiltons.org.uk/heritage/archive
